What would happen if USFK leave?

The uncomfortable reality is the North Korea justifies the American presence, while the American presence justifies North Korea.

The withdrawal of United States Forces Korea (USFK) is popping up in conversations again. Supporters argue that the American military presence perpetuates North Korean paranoia, sustains regional militarization, traps the Korean Peninsula in Cold War logic, and exposes Korea to Trump’s incapacity. Critics argue the opposite: that USFK is the central pillar preventing coercion, instability, and strategic miscalculation. Both perspectives contain elements of truth.

The difficulty lies in the fact that the American presence simultaneously restrains and legitimizes the North Korean regime. USFK is not merely a military deployment; it is part of a deeply entrenched political and psychological ecosystem in which threat, deterrence, ideology, and survival have become mutually reinforcing. North Korea needs the United States!

North Korea benefits from the existence of the United States as an external adversary—sadly all states do. Enemies increase internal unity, justify mobilization, sacrifice, increased state authority, and the suppression of domestic trouble makers.

In their formative stages, both North Korea and South Korea were built around the interconnected phenomena of external threat and militarization. However, as a result of its early revolutionary ideology, its later transformation into a personalist dynastic system, and its widening developmental gap with an ethnically and linguistically compatible rival state, North Korea evolved into a political system that relies heavily upon the continued existence of an external threat narrative.

The importance of an external threat to the state is evident throughout state documents, constitutional language, military doctrine, propaganda, and leadership speeches, all of which consistently emphasize encirclement, hostile foreign forces, and the necessity of permanent vigilance and military preparedness for national survival.

The presence of the U.S. forces in South Korea and Japan provides a powerful organizing myth for the regime. It helps justify economic sacrifice, political repression, the securing of nuclear weapons, and a highly securitized-orientation of the state. Without the American threat, a major ideological pillar weakens. The regime would lose its most useful external enemy. It becomes harder to explain why society must remain permanently mobilized, isolated, and relatively poor in contrast to South Korea.

This is understandable because we can see the same in the mirror. North Korea is a useful threat to the U.S. The presence of North Korea provides the justification for the continued forward deployment of U.S. military power on the Eurasian continent—an important pivot to secure the First Island Chain; sustains high levels of defence spending and arms production; strengthens alliance cohesion between the United States, South Korea, and Japan; legitimizes missile defence expansion and regional military integration; and preserves the broader American-led security architecture in East Asia.

North Korea justifies the American presence, while the American presence justifies North Korea. It’s kind of a chick or the egg sorta thing.

The question of which came first has become almost irrelevant; the two now sustain one another.

The stark reality that states need enemies makes it easy to imagine that if the perceived threat were removed, then the the socio-political ills of securitization would also disappear. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

The existence of an enemy is easy to oversimplify. The disappearance of the U.S. threat would not necessarily make North Korea peaceful. It could produce several very different trajectories.

One trajectory is moderation. If the USFK departed and the North Korean leadership genuinely believed its survival was guaranteed, it might gradually reduce its level of hostility and confrontation. It may reduce military tensions, pursue economic opening, and become more like a conventional authoritarian state - more like Tajikistan or Turkmenistan.

There is evidence North Korea periodically sought exactly this kind of security bargain: aid, recognition, sanctions relief, and survival guarantees in exchange for stabilization. Much of its diplomacy since the 1990s can be interpreted as an attempt to secure regime survival, not world conquest.

Another trajectory is coercive expansion. If the USFK departed and the North Korean leadership genuinely believed its survival was guaranteed, it might perceive South Korea as politically divided and vulnerable (the U.S. alliance and its intelligence services are arguably a moderating influence); Japan as constrained or unwilling to risk intervention; and China as dominant and cautious, but ultimately disinterested in direct involvement.

Under such conditions, Pyongyang could become more aggressive in pursuing intimidation and ultimately coercive reunification. Not necessarily because it “needs war,” but because the deterrent structure holding the peninsula stable would weaken. Rather than launching an immediate invasion, North Korea would more likely escalate pressure gradually through missile and nuclear brinkmanship, border and maritime provocations, calibrated military incidents, and ultimately political interference and coercion to accept a North Korean model of unification.

The aim would be the gradual erosion of South Korean political cohesion and confidence, allowing Pyongyang to present reunification under Northern dominance as increasingly inevitable. In such circumstances, coercion could come to be viewed by the North Korean leadership not as reckless adventurism, but as a rational strategic opportunity.

Then there’s another trajectory—coercive rent-seeking. If the USFK departed and the North Korean leadership genuinely believed its survival was guaranteed, it might attempt to extract concessions. Humans are greedy. Elites are particularly greedy—and ruthless. That is how they reach and maintain power. In systems such as North Korea, insecurity itself can become profitable. Threat is not merely ideological; it is also an economic asset.

Tension on the Korean Peninsula creates opportunities for elites to extract concessions, aid, sanctions relief, and political leverage. The regime has long been accused of generating revenue through synthetic drug production and trafficking, cybercrime and cryptocurrency theft, weapons proliferation, and calibrated military escalation designed to force negotiations or payments.

Under such conditions, instability becomes monetizable. Missile tests, border incidents, and nuclear crises generate international urgency, reopening diplomatic and economic channels. The regime may therefore benefit most not from peace or total war, but from a state of permanent controlled tension: dangerous enough to command attention and extract profit, but not so dangerous that it risks regime collapse. A situation which, some could argue, would be an intensification of the last two decades.

Ultimately, the question of USFK withdrawal is not whether the disappearance of the American military presence would automatically make North Korea more peaceful or more aggressive. It is whether the structures that have stabilized the peninsula for decades can be removed without unleashing new forms of instability.

North Korea may moderate if it feels secure, integrated, and economically incentivized toward stability. It may also become more coercive if it perceives strategic opportunity in a weakened deterrence environment. Equally, elements within the regime may simply seek to preserve a profitable state of permanent controlled crisis.

The uncomfortable reality is that South Korea’s hosting of USFK and the North Korean threat now partially sustain one another. Removing one does not guarantee the disappearance of the other. AND this is just South and North Korea… add U.S. and Chinese strategic interests, as well as Russian and Japanese, and the whole ball game changes.

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